Callahan's Place 09 - Callahan's Con (v5.0) Read Free

that to a state functionary with a fill-in-the-blank form, sometime.
    I wished Zoey were there so badly my stomach hurt.   She was our family’s designated Speaker-to-Bureaucrats, not me.   She spoke fluent Bullshit.   I speak only American, some Canadian and a smattering of English, and I’ve learned from painful experience how dangerous that is around a civil servant.   It would be three more years before Erin would turn sixteen, and become immune to the dark powers of school boards; in the meantime she was, in the eyes of the law, just like any other child: a slave.
    Zoey wasn’t there.   We owned no cell phone.   I couldn’t recall the last name of the lead singer at whose place she was rehearsing, if I’d ever known it, so I had no way to look up his phone number.   It was up to me.
    I cleared my throat, and said, “Listen, Field Inspector Czrjghnczl, I…excuse me a moment.”
    The brain behaves oddly under stress.   A penny finally dropped.   I turned away from her for a moment and directed an accusatory glare down the bar at Walter.   He grimaced back, probably with shame.   “The district attorney’s name was Tarara Buhm?” I asked him.
    He hung his head.
    “Tarara Buhm, D.A.?”
    He nodded.
    I took in a long slow breath, let it out even slower.   “Right.”   I turned back to the Antichrist.   “Listen, Field Marshal Von…I’m sorry, Field Inspector Czrjghnczl…I’d just like to—”
    “The accent is on the ‘rjgh,’” she interjected.
    Another long slow breath.   “Right.   As I was saying, I’d like to—”
    Harry picked then to shriek, “I’d like to cut the mustard with you and then lick the jar clean afterwards, you spicy slut!”
    She turned bright red and spun on her heel, ready to do battle.   Then she relaxed a little.   “Oh for God’s sake.   I thought it was a person.”
    For once, Harry was speechless.   He blinked at her for a moment…then rose into the air with a flurry of angry flapping and flew past me.   In a place of honor behind the bar sits an old fashioned pull-chain toilet, a little under five inches tall but fully functional.   Harry landed, perched on it, put it to its intended use, and flushed it.
    “What a disgusting parrot,” she said.
    “True, but he’s not dead.”
    She didn’t get the reference, and I didn’t try to pursue it.
    “Excuse me, madam,” Ralph von Wau Wau said behind her.   “On what basis do you say that my friend Harry is not a person?”
    Uh-oh , I thought.   You don’t often hear Ralph drop that Colonel Klink accent of his…but when he does, it’s time to seek cover.
    She of course had no way of knowing that, and his tone was soft and gentle.   She turned around, and whether she intended to debate with him, or simply tell him she was too important to do so, cannot be known, because when she finished turning he was not there.   Nobody was.   She had just heard his voice from two feet behind her, and now nobody was there; she blinked in annoyance.
    Then she thought to look down.
    She had been opening her mouth to speak as she turned.   Now it just kept opening, until she looked like she were using it to pleasure an invisible elephant…but nothing could come out of it because she could not stop inhaling.
    It was hard to blame her.   It’s disturbing enough to look down and discover a full-grown, visibly pissed-off German shepherd at your feet.   But if it challenges you to argue semantics with it, and you don’t lose your cool…Jack, you dead.   I sighed.   I could already tell this was probably going to cost me.
    “I vill admit,” Ralph told her, “his sense of humor leaves virtually everything to be desired.   But by zat criterion zere are very few perzonss present here right now.”   His fake accent was starting to come back, an encouraging sign.
    She yanked her eyes away from him with an almost audible sucking sound, and looked quickly around her.   I could tell she was looking for the